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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (143160)	11/9/2019 2:58:57 PM
From: Smart_Asset	Respond to of 364683

<<..Some social scientists—I'll call them "softies"—shrug off this criticism, because they identify less with physicists and chemists than with scholars in the humanities. Stevens Institute is a case in point: Social science falls within the jurisdiction of the Stevens College of Arts & Letters, which also encompasses philosophy, history, literature, music and my own humble discipline, science communication. As far as I can tell, my social-science colleagues aren't seething with resentment at being lumped together with the humanities folks.>> In some of my conversations with social scientists I have detected resentment at the idea of practicing soft science. I prefer to think of it as it's own category and as such open to much more interpretation than math or chemistry or physics. That is interesting in and of itself. <<More recently, as the prestige of neuroscience has surged, hardies have discovered the benefits of including magnetic-resonance imaging and other brain-scanning experiments in grant proposals, and they have attached the prefix "neuro" to their disciplines, yielding coinages such as neuroeconomics and neuroanthropology.>> Prefixes are handy to know. I personally use myo in my own 'practice'. Myo as in the Greek prefix for muscle. <<More recently, as the prestige of neuroscience has surged, hardies have discovered the benefits of including magnetic-resonance imaging and other brain-scanning experiments in grant proposals, and they have attached the prefix "neuro" to their disciplines, yielding coinages such as neuroeconomics and neuroanthropology. >> Nothing wrong with being a soft science. It's simply recognizing it's not really science at all. The category 'soft science' is separate from the sciences or the humanities. Better to just go by econ or psych or any social discipline. A third rail if you will. << social science will never approach the precision and predictive power of the hard sciences. >> I'll agree with precision but the predictive power of psych/soc et al can be even more powerful in that is a power given to produce wealth, health, and happiness. Math/chemistry et al not quite as much. Obviously all imho

To: bentway who wrote (143160)	11/9/2019 5:14:00 PM
From: koan	Respond to of 364683

I don't find that a compelling argument and it sort of misses the point. One cannot say because economists couldn't predict a recession that it negates economic science. That is silly. It is just too complex to get it perfect every time at this point. The problem is complexity, not science. We cannot clone a T Rex either. But we can clone a dog. There are a lot of things social science can predict and we should focus on those things. What's more those predictions lend themselves to statistical "probabilities". And just because something is a probability and not a cold fact, is no different than quantum physics that sees the very functioning of particles position and momentum as probabilities. In statistics they use simple t tests to predict if a fertilizers increases the yield on a acre of land; and so in social science statistics we can do the same thing with education, or child abuse, etc. e.g does education help a person live longer or make more money. Social science using correlations says it does and it has been confirmed a zillion times. The Republicans do not believe in social science and still adhere to the Horatio Alger idea of getting out of poverty, but social science tells us government help with education works much better. The idea one cannot predict using social science what will help a society achieve certain goals is silly. Of course it can..